After Obama’s inaugural high, president limps out of 2013

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama took the oath of office on a bright shiny day in January, declaring that “America’s possibilities are limitless.”

Twelve tumultuous months later, Obama closes out the year after a string of political calamities — including self-inflicted wounds such as the chaotic rollout of the health care law and a questionable response to Syria — sent his job approval ratings plunging and raised questions about the administration’s competency and the president’s credibility.

Nearing five years into his presidency, America’s possibilities might well be limitless, but Obama’s are another matter.

Obama insists that 2013 wasn’t a lost year, citing an improving economy and a declining unemployment rate as important progress.

“I took this job to deliver for the American people, and I knew and will continue to know that there are going to be ups and downs on it,” Obama said Friday in his last news conference of the year. “My goal every single day is just to make sure that I can look back and say we’re delivering something, not everything, because this is a long haul.”

If he’s focused on the American people, the response might sting. A majority of voters don’t trust him or don’t have confidence in his leadership.

“Those findings are particularly worrisome for Obama,” said George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University. “At this point in the presidency, if people conclude the president isn’t trustworthy, they’re not likely to change their minds. If they conclude he’s not up to the job, they’re unlikely to switch.”

At the Capitol, Obama was routinely thwarted during the year. He failed to get much of his agenda passed, including a rewrite of U.S. immigration laws and gun control legislation. And nothing was more damaging to Obama than his administration’s inept rollout of the health care law.

The slew of problems that bedeviled his signature domestic achievement included an error-laden website that required the intervention of top-level tech experts to fix, and the revelation that Obama had not told the truth when he repeatedly promised Americans that they could keep their health care plans if they wanted.

A contrite Obama in November acknowledged his administration had “fumbled” the rollout, but the fallout has been costly. PolitiFact, a nonpartisan media fact-checking site, awarded Obama its “Lie of the Year” for offering a promise that was impossible to keep. Voters weren’t much more charitable.

Fresh from his re-election, Obama opened the year with an aggressive agenda: a call to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws and to tighten gun regulations, sparked by the nation’s horror after 20 children were killed at a Connecticut elementary school a month earlier.

But a resounding defeat on gun control took some of the wind out of the administration’s sails.

Despite enlisting everyone possible to help — with a push by Vice President Joe Biden and with first lady Michelle Obama making a rare foray into politics — Obama suffered a defeat in April as a divided Congress flatly rejected his call to expand background checks, renew an assault weapons ban and limit the size of ammunition clips.

The slide accelerated in May as the Internal Revenue Service acknowledged it had inappropriately targeted groups that had political-sounding names, especially conservative and tea party organizations.

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